Quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality....

Not to be confused with my "Quality" post of a similar title, this is indeed a new story that demonstrates yet again the kind of shit that happens at my job on a regular basis...

At the end of June, a guy really fucked up some super important shit at work. Actually it was technically two guys that did it. K signed off on something very important, and then P signed off verifying that that very important thing had indeed been done. Except that it was discovered the next day that this very important thing had not been done at all. It was such a huge occurrence that it sparked hours and hours of meetings of bosses, not only in our office, but also our Chattanooga office, as well as our client who was affected by this horrific mistake. K and P were kicked off the project, feeling lucky to not be fired for such a monumental error.

The purpose of all these meetings was to discuss how this event could have occurred, and what could be done to prevent it from happening again. At the end of all this, after an estimated $100,000 of man-hours lost, the bosses were certain that we had gone above and beyond to prevent another such tragedy. But alas, a similar event happened again two weeks ago on a Wednesday night. The error was discovered by A on Thursday morning, who after looking at some paperwork determined that R and D were to blame. R and D were kicked off the project, and a similar string of events occurred again with meetings and interviews of coworkers to corroborate sides of the stories being documented. And then the following Monday morning, A came into the office and declared that after thinking about it over the weekend, he believed that it had actually been him who had made this terrible mistake not on that Wednesday night, but on that Thursday morning...about an hour before he "discovered" the error.

So now our company not only fucked up really, really important shit twice in less than two months, but now we sound like idiots because the guy who was originally documented as discovering the error is now saying he was actually responsible for it, but just doesn't remember doing it like an hour prior to finding the mistake. So it wasn't a huge surprise to any of us when our client decided to strip our office of any of this work and to transfer all the responsibility to our Chattanooga office. But...Chattanooga doesn't have enough knowledgeable people on their staff to handle all this extra work load. So the solution was to send some of us from the Chicago office to the Chattanooga office to do the work. Yes, the same people who work on the team that fucked everything up are the people who are going to continue working on this project, only now from Chattanooga instead of Chicago, as if that would make all the difference. Quality.

So the group of us were called into a meeting on Tuesday by our supervisor and our boss to let us know that they were looking for volunteers to transfer down south for approximately three months. The boss asked for a decision from everyone in the morning. No one stepped forward. Two days after this meeting, our supervisor send out an email to our team saying that they were still in need of volunteers and he needed to know within the hour if our decision was Yes or No. I emailed back No.

Everyone had been stewing about this all week now. Whispering amongst each other while our supervisor was away in meetings, people kept telling me that I was the most qualified in my position to be chosen. I am one of the five draftsmen on my team, but here is the breakdown of us. Two of those guys don't specialize in the area that's needed. Yes, they know how to draft, but it's harder to draft something that you don't understand. So that leaves myself and two other guys. One of those guys is new, only with the company for three months. He is fresh out of college and still learning so, therefore, not an experienced choice. The other guy has a 7-month-pregnant wife. That leaves me.

So I asked my supervisor on Friday morning if he knew when he and the boss would announce their decision about who would be going. He looked confused and asked why I would be concerned since I hadn't volunteered. I responded that I didn't think anyone had stepped up, in which case they'd be forced to send people who didn't want to go. He said that one of the non-specialist guys had volunteered and made it seem like I had nothing to worry about. But ultimately the decision is not up to my supervisor. It is up to my boss. And he's not really the sensitive type to say, "Let's send the less qualified guy who volunteered so that Lauren doesn't have to be apart from her newlywed husband for three months."

So for now, this story is to be continued. I hope to have the conclusion on Monday. And until then, Jim and I are just thinking on the bright side...that if I am sent away for three months, Jim will be happy to come visit me in the city that has the best Bob Evans restaurant in the country, as well as nine different Waffle House locations. So I guess it wouldn't be all bad :)

Online Dating

If you read my last post about the slacker at work, I think it was pretty clear that I was happy to have him finally out of my life. But ironically, it's actually because of that guy that I started dating the man who is now my husband.

It all started after another horrible day at work dealing with M's bullshit. I updated my Facebook status to "Quality is quality is quality...," which at the time was really only understood by the three of us at work who M said that to. So a little confused, my then future husband made a comment that was something like, "I guess you had a good day??"

I suppose I should back up here a little and give you some background on my husband and I. Jim and I have known each other for about 20 years. We grew up just over a mile apart from each other and went to the same elementary, junior high, and high schools. The first time we had a class together was in 7th grade, and with an alphabetical seating chart in place, we ended up sitting right next to each other. We were friendly, but we didn't hang out together outside of class.

We had a few classes together in 8th grade as well, and at the end of the school year, I wrote in his yearbook, "Have a great summer. Call me. [phone number]," but alas, he never called (to be fair, I have long ago thrown away my junior high yearbooks so we were unable to see what he wrote in mine. his defense is that maybe he gave me his number too and maybe I never called him either. I suppose that's possible). Then in our four years of high school neither of us can remember any classes together, so whatever relationship we had begun to form in junior high basically disappeared, and after graduation we went our separate ways.

Jump ahead to ten years later, in the summer of 2008 I got a phone call from a high school friend who said, "You'll never guess who I just reconnected with on Facebook," and I replied, "What's Facebook?" Apparently it had been around for quite awhile and I was just a super nerd who had no social life to be aware of this incredible networking site. So I joined, and it wasn't long before Jim noticed me and sent a friend request.

I was in a relationship at the time with an asshole which was quickly falling apart, and Jim was being really interactive with me on Facebook. My memories of him from 7th grade were that he was really shy, but he wasn't anymore. He was so funny and sweet and charming and hot and I totally started falling for him...my online crush.

So not long after my relationship with the asshole was officially over, I was pretty seriously set on getting together with Jim somehow. It was April of 2009 and he had made a status update that he was thinking about having a Memorial Day party. I decided that I was going to invite myself to that party. I figured that even if he had zero interest in me, he was way too nice to say "No" to my request to crash his party. But before I had to do that, things fell into place on their own when I made that "quality" status update, setting off a string of comments, and then instant messaging.

I couldn't believe he was messaging with me! Like, how did I get so lucky that this amazing guy who could be busy chatting with anyone else, had decided to dedicate his time to catching up on the previous decade with me. But I knew this was going to be my chance to ask him to that party. So I started flirting with him, at least as much as that's possible via instant message. I was trying my hardest to sound cute and funny and sweet and single. And it was going fine, but he hadn't really given me much of an opening to make my intentions known. So I just decided to be blunt about it. I figured that the worst case scenario would be that I'd make a fool of myself and he'd un-friend me. I typed, "So...are you ever going to ask me for my phone number, or what?"

Jim: "Oh...geez...I mean...I really wanted to...but...I just...well...I didn't want to seem too forward...like...I was just trying to be a gentleman......."

Me: "I have been flirting with you for the last 2 hours. What did you think my intentions were?"

Jim: "Oh...well...okay then. Yeah...um...I'd love to have your phone number....."

Me: "Here it is. And you better not wait the 'obligatory' 3-day rule to use it!"

Jim: "Trust me. I won't!"

He called me as soon as we logged off Facebook, just to say goodnight and hear my voice.

I guess it's still probable that if I hadn't made that status update about M which initiated my relationship with Jim, I still would have gone to his Memorial Day party, and I guess our story would have taken the same path. But a little part of me still feels like I owe a big thank you to M for being such a Douchington and helping me begin a fabulous life with my husband.

Selfish

Have you ever seen the episode of "Friends" where Joey is a volunteer at the PBS telethon, taking pledges? He gets into a debate with Phoebe, who blasts Joey for being selfish, saying that he only wants to help with the pledge drive so that he can be seen on television, which would be good exposure for his acting career. He argues that there is no such thing as an unselfish good deed. He claims that even Phoebe acting as a surrogate for her brother was selfish because it made HER feel good to help out her family. And I think I have to completely agree with Joey's side of the argument.

The last few weeks at my job have been really busy for our small group of 14. We have so many projects going on simultaneously and not enough people to get everything done by the deadlines in a normal 8-5 workday. So in an effort to get our project schedules back on track, we've been asked to work a lot of overtime, which is visibly stretching everyone pretty thin. I've been working 6 days a week, averaging about a 10 hours per day, and we are pretty much all in that same boat. So people are coming to work tired, sluggish, not smiling as much, just pulling the mood down. And by Friday morning, I was pretty bummed about it. There was a lot of TGIF talk on my favorite morning radio show, discussing weekend plans and events going on around town. But for me, my Friday wasn't much to celebrate since I still had two more long work days ahead of me.

Walking to work, I decided to stop at Corner Bakery for a bagel. But when I got there, I walked past a display table of coffee cakes. I selfishly bought one to share with my coworkers.

I am usually the 2nd person into work at 7:00 a.m. as was the case on Friday. I set up the coffee cake next to the coffee maker and went to work. And as I expected, within minutes of others arriving I could hear talk about "Who brought in the cake?"

One guy came over to my area of the floor and asked, "Is anyone over here celebrating something?" I replied that I had brought in the coffee cake, just feeling like doing something nice for everyone. And he went around and spread the word that I was the source of the breakfast treat. He even mentioned it at our daily morning meeting in which we discuss the status of our projects. People started appearing at my desk, cake in hand, not only to thank me but also to just take a break from their day and talk to me. So for a few minutes here and there, we all got to set aside our piles of work to indulge in some sugar and some friendly conversation. And everyone seemed to enjoy it so much that I was (selfishly) even a little hopeful that my generosity would spark others to do the same and take a turn to provide breakfast for the rest of us.

But I guess karma didn't care for my selfish breakfast-sharing intentions. No one else brought in breakfast on Saturday :(

Quality

I work for an engineer which, at least at my current company, is a job that requires a lot of team work. So to facilitate that need, our desks are organized into "quads" which are basically one huge cubicle with a desk in each of the four corners. It's great to be that close if you are lucky enough to sit with awesome people. It also makes it pretty tough to slack off without at least three other people being aware of it. And that was the case a few years ago with our 58-year-old Head Designer, M.

When I first started working at this company, I was put into a quad with M, J and E. J and E are both super awesome. Those two guys had already become great friends, and I fit in really well with them too after I joined the quad. The 4th member of our group however (who I'm happy to say no longer works here) was one of the worst people I've ever know. His lack of commitment to his job and his family was absolutely despicable. Here's how a typical 8 to 5 workday for him would go:

8:30 - Show up to work
8:30-9:00 - Check email (work and personal)
9:00-9:30 - Go to Starbucks
9:30-9:45 - Tell me a boring story...

M (holding a camera): What year were you born?
Me: 1980.
M: Would you believe that I bought this camera in 1977.....

9:45-10:00 - Take a break
10:00-10:45 - Call girlfriend
10:45-11:00 - Call wife
11:00-11:30 - Work
11:30-1:00 - Lunch break
1:00-1:30 - Eat the lunch he brought back, while surfing the Internet
1:30-2:00 - Work
2:00-3:00 - M.I.A.
3:00-3:30 - Work
3:30-4:00 - Take the camera out of his desk again and tell me the same boring story he told me earlier...

M (holding a camera): What year were you born?
Me: 1980.
M: Would you believe that I bought this camera in 1977.....

WTF?? Is he doing material? Does he rehearse this in the shower every morning or something? And does he seriously not remember that he already told me the camera story?

4:00-4:30 - Call girlfriend again
4:30-4:45 - Pack up and leave for the day

Now, you might think I'm making it look worse than it was. I'm absolutely not. It got to the point where I actually said something to him about it. He'd been talking to his wife for at least a half hour about some maintenance issue at their house. When he got off the phone...

Me: If you have personal business to take care of, then you should use a Personal Day and go take care of your business.
M (surprised): Did you need me for something while I was on the phone?
Me: No. But that's not the point. We are so far behind on this project schedule, E and J have been working shit tons of overtime for weeks, and you're charging hours to the budget that are spent making personal phone calls.
M (still surprised): ......Okay....

He turned around and started to pretend to do a little work, just moving the mouse across the screen and zooming in and out of a drawing a few times. Awesome. And when he (not surprisingly) had continued to keep up with his usual daily schedule, the other three of us were so mad, that all we could do to keep from smashing his testicles into the ground was to just try to laugh at the situation.

So we started timing him whenever he wasn't working and we would make bets every Monday on what we thought his weekly total of work time vs. non-work time would be. I think it averaged out to about 18 of 40 hours a week not working, although I know that's giving him the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes it was hard to determine if the periods of time he was away from his desk was work related or not. And a lot of the time the three of us were so busy actually working that we wouldn't notice he was gone, or on the Internet, or eating peanuts, or playing with his camera, or clipping his fingernails...but either way, he was clearly a slacker.

And as the project deadline got closer and closer, and M's pile of work was getting bigger and bigger, the rest of us were getting more and more concerned. So one day E asked M what his thoughts were about meeting our project deadline. M replied, "I'm not concerned about the project schedule. It's more important to take as much time as we need to make sure it's correct....because I believe that quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality, is quality."

No exaggeration...he repeated it at least a dozen times. And the other three of us were trying SO HARD not to burst out laughing. It was so effing ridiculous! Of all people to be talking about quality...was this guy fucking kidding??

But apparently he actually was aware of the fact this his level of "quality" wasn't quite up to par, because as the project deadline approached, M knew that he couldn't possibly get everything done in time. And he knew that the boss would question him about all the hours charged to the project and that he wouldn't have adequate justification for it. So he quit. Without any new job lined up, he just quit. He made up some lame excuse that he'd rather be working at Starbucks and two weeks later, he was gone. About a year later, one of M's friends who still worked at the company told me that M still hadn't found a new job. I guess Starbucks wasn't interested in his personal policy that quality, is quality, is quality, is.....

The Other White Meat

When I lived alone, it made absolutely no sense to cook any meals for myself:

1. I had no one to impress
2. Recipes are always meant for a minimum of 4 people
3. Even if I cut the recipe in half, there would still be leftovers
4. Leftovers are always gross reheated so I'd either be eating gross, reheated leftovers or more likely just throwing them away once they started to grow mold in my fridge
5. I'm pretty lazy and would much rather take 2 seconds to push a button on the microwave vs. making any more effort than what is minimally required

But after I moved in with my husband (who had the same exact feelings about cooking for 1 that I did), I felt like it might be slightly more worth the effort of cooking, now that there were two people to feed. So lately I've been seeing a lot of commercials for pork. I have never in my life eaten pork, but have always been curious. They market it as "the other white meat," and since chicken is pretty good (the original white meat, I suppose), I thought pork couldn't be that bad either, and I picked up a package the last time I was at the grocery store.

So last night we were trying to figure out what to do for dinner...get fast food, make a frozen pizza, microwave a Lean Cuisine...but I noticed that the pork was getting to the date where I either needed to use it or freeze it. So I found a recipe online for a casserole and decided to give it a try.

As soon as I put the pork in the skillet, I knew I would hate it. It smelled like feet. Like...a LOT like feet. But trying not to disappoint my husband after I already committed myself to cooking, I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I figured that maybe if I just added a lot more cheese than what was called for, it might overpower the foot taste. But I ended up overcooking the pork on the outside of all the pieces, and half the pieces were tough on the inside; the other half were raw on the inside.

So I asked my husband if he would mind NOT having pork for dinner, to which he quite happily responded that it was fine with him that my cooked skills had failed. So I guess you can add another item to the aforementioned list of why I don't cook...

6.  I suck at cooking.

Scammed

I work in the Loop, and have about a mile walk from Union Station to my office building. Along the way, I pass by a lot of regular beggars, and it always baffles me when I see other commuters giving change to these people. In my opinion, after 3 years of working downtown and not once handing out a single penny, these people still manage to be alive and well, so they must be doing just fine without my donation. And I know that even if I give them some change today, they will be right back in that same spot tomorrow asking me for more. So I do my best to avoid eye contact and just make my way quickly past.




But there are a few of them who are more pushy than others, and make themselves harder to completely ignore. There is the lady who yells, "HI! C'n ya sprr su CHANGE!?" (although every once in awhile she's too busy talking on her cell phone instead of asking for money. i guess she's got to pay that verizon bill somehow...)

And there is the guy at the end of the bridge with the crutch who rattles around a few coins in a McDonald's cup while holding a sign that says something about God blessing those who help, trying to get the sympathy hand-out. I can't imagine that this guy is fooling anyone just by leaning on that crutch. I can stand around with my leg turned inward too. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm crippled.

And then there is the legless guy at LaSalle and Adams who shouts "Good morning!" to everyone who passes him. And this is the guy who scammed me out of $6 one day...

I had long-ago discovered that the best strategy against these beggars was to just avoid them as best I could. So I simply began walking on the other side of the street as I crossed LaSalle, until one morning when a coworker came in and told me that he had just talked to the legless guy. My buddy found out that this guy was also a military vet, which gave the two of them something to talk about, and that he was a really nice, well-intentioned guy. My friend had tried to give him $20, but this guy responded that he wasn't out there for money. He got enough from his disability checks to get by. And after fighting in the war and seeing all the hatred people have for each other, he thought he'd just go out there and try to make people smile by wishing them a good day.

I thought that was pretty cool. And it made me feel really bad about judging this guy and trying to avoid him. So I began walking past him every morning, giving him a big smile, and wishing him a good day. And I noticed how many shitty people walked right past him and couldn't even be bothered to say hello back or give him a smile.

This went on daily for quite a few months that I would walk past and greet him. And I even let it slide that he would sometimes say things to me like, "Hey. You have a great smile!" or "Good morning, Beautiful Lady!" because his intentions overall seemed good. And he would always say "Go Blue!" when I wore my U of M jacket, so that scored him some extra points with me.

But one Saturday morning, I was on my way to work and he was out there as usual. As I approached him, getting ready to say "Good morning," he surprised me by saying, "Hey beautiful. Can you spare a few dollars?"

WHAT?! Where the hell did this come from? He told my buddy that he wasn't out there for money. But by this point, after months of friendly greetings every day, I had grown to think he was a nice guy. And then to make it even harder to say no, he added, "My brother needs a new kidney so I'm trying to collect money to help him."

So in an effort to avoid confrontation, I gave him the $6 that I had on me.

He seemed sincerely grateful for the donation, but I was still a little put off by it. And the more I thought about it, I realized that this might have been his plan all along; sit out there every day, don't ask for money, be super nice to people, build up a good reputation with these people, and then after they think you're a cool person, pull a 180 and ask for money, and since you've been so awesome to so many people for so many months, and have a sob-story to go along with the request, it's pretty likely that these people will give you money. Brilliant.

So now I walk on the other side of the street again.